1 British manufactures. The corn of India has been transported at unremunerative rates upon Government lines, in order that the food of the people might be cheapened. There is now a cry for giving free primary education to every one. All these are absolute departures from the time-honoured English principle of leaving every man to do the best for himself, and fare as he may. Some of them are unconscious concessions, and others are conscious approaches to State Socialism. It is scarcely conceivable that we have seen the end yet. There seems nothing overstrained in supposing that the State in England, as elsewhere, may undertake the construction of railways, or the reclaiming of land from the sea; and may, in fact, engage largely in industrial enterprises, so as to ensure work and support for a large part of the population. Again, it may buy up existing railways, as it has bought up telegraphs; and in this case a great body of workmen possessing votes will look to the State as paymaster, and will have a voice in determining what they are to get. Lastly, it is more than conceivable that education of every kind will be made free. The expediency of giving intellect, in every condition of life, its chance to assert itself will recommend this change, and the upper classes are certain to contend that if the State relieves parents in one class of life from the charge of their children's schooling, it is bound to relieve all. Now, it is impossible to say beforehand whether these changes will be for good or ill. What seems 1 "The railways, so far from being a commercial success, have entailed the very heavy burden of over £47,000,000 on the Indian taxpayer. The Indus Valley and Sind-Punjab and Delhi Railways are the most signal instance of bounty-supported lines, but to a less extent; all the wheat-carrying lines are only worked by the help of the State."-Connell on "Indian Railways and Indian Wheat," Statistical Journal, 1885, pp. 244-253. 1 evident is that they are bound to affect the character of the whole people. Nowhere in the world has the struggle for existence been so fierce as in Great Britain; and it has been the mainspring of English energy. In the sixteenth century Meteren declared that Englishmen were as lazy as Spaniards. They were, in fact, like the Spaniards of that time, ready for adventure, able to endure great hardships, unsurpassable explorers and privateers, but indisposed to the plodding industry for which Germans and Flemings were conspicuous. Two centuries later Holberg declared that the greatest examples of human indolence were to be found among the pauper class in England, and the best examples of well-applied toil among the English adventurers and merchants. The praise, though Holberg uses the word "industry," is evidently directed to English enterprise. A greater thinker than Holberg, Kant, was peculiarly impressed by the factitious self-reliance and capricious originality of the English character; and taking the general estimate of our nation in that century, we may say that it was a popular reflection of Kant's judgment, though commonly more favourable. The Englishman of old French novels is habitually an original, disregardful of the opinion of the world, ready to measure 2 L > 1 Quoted in Motley's United Netherlands, vol. i. p. 291. This is the criticism of a foreigner, but it is incidentally confirmed by the negative testimony of the Venetian Ambassador, Andrea Trevisano, of Nicander Nucius, of Borde, and of Lely, who agree in omitting all mention of industry as a feature in English character. It must be borne in mind that the ploughman was scarce in times like the sixteenth century, when most of the land was in pasture, and that we owe our manufactures to Flemish settlers. The two classes most distinguished for steady toil were, therefore, scantily represented. one. 2 Holberg's Betänkning over nogle Europäiske Nationer, S. 232. 3 Kant's Anthropologie. Kant's estimate is distinctly an unfriendly He calls the English "a people of whim:" glances at their "brutal pride:" (stolze Grobheit) and suggests that English self-assertiveness is not natural, but the result of circumstances. himself against any odds, and taking nothing upon trust. Peterborough and Clive, the knights-errant at the head of armies and councils, were in fact glorified instances of the Englishman, as his contemporaries appraised him. The reputation which the Englishman of Great Britain enjoyed has now been in great measure transferred to the Anglo-American. The original race has grown "bulbous, heavy-witted, material,"1 as Hawthorne cynically puts it; is careful of its bank-balance and of the proprieties; is weighted with an ever-present sense of responsibilities. No Peterborough or Clive would now be allowed a free hand by his Government. The first impetuous act would provoke a recall by telegram. The conquest of an Empire would only terrify the British Cabinet with an apprehension of Parliamentary criticism. Now, this change, which we see most conspicuously in matters of foreign policy, is one that may be traced in every direction. "The English," says Holberg, “as soon as they hear of anything they are not familiar with, take hold of it at once, examine it, accept it, and teach it publicly." Holberg referred to new opinions; and the contrast between the English school of free thought, which moulded religious enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and the utter sterility of our literature in the nineteenth, except for a single name, is sufficiently remarkable. Heine has said, that the most stupid Englishman can talk sensibly about politics, and that it is impossible to extract anything but nonsense from the best educated Englishman when religion is discussed.2 The reason is not that educated Englishmen are unconscious of the movement of speculative thought all the world over, but that they deliberately shrink from the impulse to explore new regions, at the cost of surrendering certain accepted and acceptable conclusions. Certainly no one can now say, as Holberg did, that there is a ready taking in and promulgation of new thought. The results of Biblical criticism in Germany have never been tolerated in England, till they were so nearly superseded in their native country as to appear comparatively Conservative; and even the scientific conclusions of the Englishman Darwin were being disseminated in text-books on the Continent while English society was reading refutations of them, or at best taking refuge in half-hearted attempts to reconcile the doctrine of evolution with the teaching of Genesis. Still, it is probably true to say that English speculation is more fearless in physical science than in metaphysics or Biblical exegesis, or the critical reconstruction of history. A great many persons are glad to acquiesce in the view that the conclusions of science may be allowed to stand by themselves, and that when they are absolutely opposed to those of faith, it is not necessary to disbelieve either. 1 Hawthorne's Our Old Home, vol. i. p. 99. 2 Heine, England: Die Emancipation der Katholiken, Band xi. S. 115. Perhaps one of the best instances of the decadence of English energy is in the imperfect welcome accorded to mechanical invention. The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth were conspicuous in England by the number of new inventions given to the world. The industrial supremacy of the globe was achieved almost at a bound by the men whose catalogue of names includes Arkwright and Hargreaves, Watt and Bramah, Brinsley and Stephenson, Wedgwood, Maudsley, and Davy. There is no reason why this inventive faculty should not have continued in the country. Nasmyth, Bessemer, Whitworth, and J Armstrong are conspicuous instances that the race retains the power of magnificent conceptions, and the great multiplication of factories and workshops in Great Britain ought to have stimulated the thought, as it has trained the eyes and hands of a large industrial population. Indeed, it may be said that England still contributes the larger half of the world's inventive fertility; but England no longer gets or deserves the credit for it. If we look back to actual history, we shall find that many of the best patents, such as the steam-plough, the sewing-machine, and the electric telegraph had to cross back to England from America before they could obtain recognition.1 Even Nasmyth's steam-hammer was employed in Creuzot before the foundries of his own country adopted it. The English inventor is still more than the equal of his rivals; more fertile in expedients than the German, and more patient than the American. Where he fails is when he carries his work to market. The instinctive feeling in England is, that if an invention were really valuable it would have been hit upon before; the feeling in America, that 2 1 It may be added that the electric telephone was first invented by Mr. Graham Bell of Edinburgh, who had studied the subject under his father in Scotland, though he took out the first patent in America. Moncel's Le Téléphone, pp. 6, 33. A reaping-machine, resembling the Australian stripper, has been traced back to the Belgae as known by Pliny; and Mr. Smiles shows that one was in use in France in the sixteenth century (Industrial Biography, p. 173); while the present form was invented by Commin of Denwick (1812), and Patrick Bell of Dumfries (1827), before M'Cormick patented it in America. The sewing-machine was first invented by Saint in England, c. 1790. Howe in America improved it, and sold the patent for a trifle (£250) to Thomas in England. Thomas neglected to bring it out, and Howe bought it again and made it a success in America. 2 Smiles's Industrial Biography, p. 287. Compare Goethe's remark: "Der Engländer ist Meister das Entdeckte gleich zu nützen, bis es wieder zur neuen Entdeckung, und frischer That führt. Man frage nur, warum sie uns überall voraus sind." - Ueber Naturwissenschaft, Band iii. S. 268. |